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John Blythe Barrymore III
The Pipe Strip.gif "Many of you say, 'Oh, but I am not blind. I have never been blind,'... But when you truly see, you will understand just how truly blind you once were to even think it right to say you were not blind. What does a blind man see? Blackness. Darkness. Blankness. Blank darkness. Dark blankness.The absence of things, quite literally NO thing. No things. Nothings. So, you see nothing, and I bring you into the light. A cat has your pipe! You've been blind, do you understand this!? The cat has your pipe.You can't fully immerse yourself, you don't have the light. You don't have the radiance, the radical light, the radically radiant light of truth and truth's belonging love, and nature of light, and loving truthful radiance. So don't be bold, and make bold statements. I know of you. The cat has your pipe. The. Cat. Has. Your. Pipe. Remember that." - One of Barrymore's early writings John Blythe Barrymore III is one of the main protagonists of the beta campaign of Contested Legacy/Lineage. He is a zealous, sage-like, compassionate, and humble cleric of Jim Davis who seeks to enlighten his fellow man with the radiance, the radical light, the radically radiant light of truth and truth's belonging love, and nature of light, and loving truthful radiance. He is entirely devoted to Jim Davis, The Pipe Strip and it's commandments. Sadly, it was this devotion that led to his martyrdom. The persistence of his preaching led to much concern in Dongxi Lu, who saw him as a potentially subversive force. The printing of Davisian works and there was a crackdown on its followers. Infuriated, Barrymore came to the town of Duwang to publicly preach his face, where he was arrested. He was arrested by the Divine Imperial Police of Peace and brought to the marketplace to be executed. There he made his final sermon as he was tortured in 10,000 methods before finally being torn apart by four chariots (as is the punishment for heresy). His body was then cremated in molten lead and iron, so as to prevent people creating a relic of it. And yet it failed, for within a fortnight, hagiographies were already being written on him and he was declared the Great Saint of Davis. Backstory * When Barrymore was 18 years old, he saw for the first time in his life... he saw an image of clarity. He saw a comic strip... a three panel comic strip that, though simple as it seemed, changed him... changed his being, changed who he is... Made him who he is... Enlightened him... The strip, Garfield, the comic strip was new... no more than maybe a month and a half since inception, since... since coming into existence... and there it was before him in print, he saw it... a comic strip... What was it called? Garfield. He was at his father's house... a newspaper had arrived, and he picked it up for him, and brought it inside. He organized its sections for him and then, yes, the comic strip section fell out from somewhere in the middle, and landed on the kitchen floor... he picked up the paper pages and saw, up somewhere near the top of this strip... just like Jon, he was wearing an aquamarine shirt. So he thought, "Ah, interesting. I'll have to see this later." he snipped out the little comic, and held on to it... and five days later, he reexamined it. Jim Davis, a cartoonist, had created a comic strip about a cat, Garfield... and a man, Jon Arbuckle. Well, from that point on, he made sure he read the Garfield comic strips, though as he read each one, as each day passed... the strips seemed to resonate with him less and less. he sent letters to Jim Davis, long letters, pages upon pages... asking if Mister Jim Davis could somehow publish just the one comic, over and over again... "It would be meditative," he wrote, "the strength of that." He received no response. so he vowed to read the pipe strip over and over again... That is what he calls it, "The Pipe Strip." The Pipe Strip. Everything about it is perfect. He can only describe it as a miracle of creation, something came together... the elements aligned... It is like the comets, the cosmic orchestra that is up there over your head... The immense, enormous void is working all for one thing, to tell you one thing... Gas and rock, and purity, and nothing. He will say this... When he sees the pipe strip... and that means every single time he looks at the lines, the colors, the shapes that make up the three panel comic... he sees perfection. Does he find perfection in many things? Some things, he would say... Some things are perfect... and this is one of them. He will look at the little tuft of hair on Jon Arbuckle's head and remark "it is the perfect shade... The purple pipe in Garfield's mouth... How could a mere mortal even MAKE this?" As mentioned before, none of the other strips seemed to have the weight of the pipe strip... But he would wonder about the man who is able to even, just once, create the perfect form, a literally flawless execution of art, brilliance! Just as in a ward... he knows there is a spiritual element at work...He's seen his share of bad times and in his words... "when you have something... Well, it's just... emotions, and neurons in your brain, but... something tells you that it's the truth...Truth's radiant light." Barrymore comes from a prominent acting family but was unable to achieve the success that his ancestors and half sister achieved and his career eventually dried up. He ended up homeless on the streets of the capitol but his life was changed when he was brought into the home of a young shaman and yogi named Avram Dahb Singh Sahib who became his spiritual adviser. Then, a miracle happened. Upon retrieving his morning paper, to clip the Garfield comic... he noticed a young girl, selling lemonade two houses down. She sat, occupied at her stand. She had no customers in sight. So, he approached, and saw that she was coloring. he looked at her drawing...Three rectangular boxes. A man, in a blue shirt. An orange cat. He knew what this was. Even in her crude scribbles, He knew EXACTLY what this was. She was drawing a Garfield comic. He looked at her words, and he saw that, in her strip, Jon asked Garfield to retrieve a newspaper. Heh, funny... since Ihe'd done just that with himself... Garfield is sarcastic, but agrees to. He returns and calls Jon... "Sahib". Jon exclaims that the paper's all chewed up, but then Garfield says, "Sahib asks fish, paper is wet. Sahib asks cat, paper is holey." He remembered the words, and ran back to the house, and thought, "How odd that Sahib shows up in the strip, and my spiritual adviser's name is Avram Dahb Singh Sahib!" Coincidence surely, but, nonetheless, he spent the next sixteen hours poring through his clipped Garfield comics, looking for the strip this young girl had been coloring... he couldn't find it... and he eventually fell asleep, right on the kitchen table. Next morning, he retrieved his paper again, and he clipped the Garfield comic. There it was. The Sahib Strip, in all its glory. The girl had been drawing the next day's strip! So, he ran right out of the house, he ran back to where she was... but she was gone, and in place of the lemonade stand was a "For Sale" sign. They'd moved out. He rushed back to his house to tell Avram, but... he found a note informing him that he'd moved away as well. He reeled, for several hours, and then it all connected for him. It was meant to be. It was meant to be this way! Jim Davis... Jon, Garfield... It was always meant to be this way for him.... They move to the forefront, and everything else fades away, EVERYTHING else; the girl, the lemonade stand, Avram Dahb Singh Sahib, it all existed to show him the way, and when he'd found the way...Everything else melted away. It was a beautiful miracle... and if the day he first saw the pipe strip... was the first day of his life, then that day, was the second day of his life. He never looked back. Garfield has transformed him... and he has become a man, born anew, because of Garfield. Jim Davis had spoken to him through these comics and he began to delve ever deeper into the knowledge they contained. As time went he devolved a comprehensive religion around the Pipe Strip. He has an obligation. An obligation to all creature to seek out those who do not see and inform them of the truth. He wanders throughout the world looking for converts. Category:Characters